A young man and a young woman stand near a cliff. The young man is named Ben Remmy, and he’s a big aficionado for balloons, large and small. The nameless young woman soon disappears from the scene. Eventually, after having watched the sun set, Ben decides it’s time to head off. So he boards his hot air balloon and sets off into the night, only for his balloon to be shot down by a UFO.
He lands safely, but a scavenging woman named Elise Pipers steals some of his smaller balloons, releasing one into the sky. Ben reacts in anger, and Elise guiltily invites him over to her house to spend the night.
There, Elise tells Ben he’s the first person she’s seen in years. The only way she knows of returning to civilization is through a nearby mine, which she insists is haunted by ghosts. Ben decides it’s worth the risk, and talks Elise into coming along with him into the haunted mine.
Facade is authored by Grumpisimo, and can be found here.
Has a character sheet in the works.
Facade contains examples of the following tropes:
- Abandoned Mine: Abandoned by the living, anyway.
- all lowercase letters: All the ghosts' dialogue. Apparently, uppercase letters and punctuation is strictly reserved for the living.
- Color-Coded Characters: Every single person in this comic is a different color of the rainbow, with matching dialogue text.
- Damaged Soul: Death has left a dark mark on the souls of all the ghosts.
- Excuse Plot: Facade's story kicks off because an alien spaceship shoots Ben's hot air balloon down by Elise's house. Not long after, the interactive comic allows a quick chink in its fourth wall, to let its audience know it doesn't particularly want to be about space aliens.Ben: Do you ever see any UFOs this high up?Elise: UFOs? Like, alien ships? ….I don't think I've ever seen a UFO.Ben: Oh. Hmm. (Maybe that was just a plot device…)Elise: What was that?Ben: Oh, nothing.
- Flying Saucer: One shoots down Ben's hot air balloon.
- Inventory Management Puzzle: Facade's inventory system is highly unusual. Protagonists only have three inventory squares each, but can stow an insane amount of a given item in those squares.
- Example: If 'John Doe' were a Facade protagonist, he could carry 50 pears, 50 plums, and 50 peaches within his three inventory squares. But 1 pear, 1 peach, 1 plum and 1 apple? No way: John wouldn't have the inventory space for something like that.
- Gilded Cage: Scott Starter's enormous castle is this for Nicole.
- Never Speak Ill of the Dead: The memorial just outside the mine does a nice job of accentuating all the dead folks' positive traits.
- Nonindicative Name: So far, there doesn't seem to be any particular reason why this webcomic's title is 'Facade.'
- One-Word Title:
- Pink Girl, Blue Boy: Ben's blue, the rejected heroine's pink.
- Refusal of the Call: Elise literally calls Nicole on her dead husband's phone, begging for help. Nicole tells her never to call her back and hangs up on her.
- Splash of Color: The City which Nicole lives in, especially her office. Almost the entire place is as gray as Kansas in The Wizard of Oz, with the exception of herself and other humans, and her boss' collection of golden trophies.
- All of which contrasts dramatically with all the colorful vibrancy that's visible in Ben and Elise's chapters.
- Stick-Figure Comic
- Two Girls to a Team: Unusually, this tropes applies to a group of antagonists: the eight ghost miners, with Kathleen and Rina being the only two lady-ghosts. Though they're all estranged now; no teamwork exists on this 'team' anymore.
- Wham LineYou suppose you'll go home, as you typically do. Unfortunately, that place is just as much a prison as work. See, the thing is, you might actually be able to deal with Starter's bullshit...That is, if you didn't live with him.
- You Have to Believe Me!: Just when Elise manages to get her hands on a working phone and calls 911, she blurts out about UFOs and ghosts, and seems honestly surprised when the cops then tell her to 'have a nice night,' and hangs up.
